anyone bought intel duo ? i was wondering is there a much or major differences in speed.. for example 2.8G wih duo compare to 2.8G HT.. how much difference?

If it was much faster , probably i would consider duo.

I don't have it, though I believe it is much faster.

I think I recall reading that its main purpose is not to be faster, but to be able to handle multiple applications more efficiently since it has 2 actual separate cores processing at the same time compared to the ht that has 1 core. So speedwise, when you handle a single application you might bearly notice a speed increase.

Right I remember that now too, you don't get preformance improvements unless you are using a duo ready application, I think photoshop is an example, or you are running two processes at once.

Yes, dual core processors are not effectively faster, when working with one application, or one thread... Hyper Threading, uses parallel pipelines inside of CPU, to simulate two processors, resulting in a slight increase in performance over non-HT processors... Dual core, goes one step further, increasing that performance levels even more...

However, if application is not designed to make use of multiple threads, or multiple cores, you waon't see some performance increase... As an option (and this is only a theory, I don't know whether someone tried it), you could assign one core to be used only by system processes, and second core to be used by other apps... That would result in some performance increase, and it would balance the usage of the cores...

So, to answer your question, you can by HyperThreading processor, as Dual Core processor yields no significant speed increase over HT... And I do believe priice is much higher for Dual Core, than HT... You need motherboard that supports DualCore, etc tec... Much cheaper to go with HyperThreading...

You could better wait untill the new processors in Intel will come.
They will probably have like 5-6 Ghz
Also better wait till Windows Vista and buy then the best Computer at the moment

Yes, it is a lot faster, but only when running multiple programmes, or programmes, optimised for dual core.
anything not written to run on dual core, will run at the speed of one of the cores.

they are very good for multitasking, as the job is spread between the processors.

Also, the operating system will make a difference, windows vista, is optimised for dual core.

I have used both a 2.8HT and also a 6300 Conroe Core2Duo and The core2 is fast as all get out, but not as much as you would think. For most day to day work, you won't notice a difference between the two.